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Join us as we take a deep dive into the real estate market with insiders in the industry.
The Business of Homes Podcast
Episode #003 With Jessica Randolph
Jessica Randolph
I think that's the number one mistake realtors make, is that they start putting their company first, in their business first, and then they lose their personality and like the true person behind it. And then people don't want to hire someone that they feel like they don't really know. And when you got this fancy brand or like all this these accolades or whatever, that can totally distract the consumer from like the actual person behind it.
Michael Conrad
Jessica Randolph Someone who I've gotten the fortune to know for a number of years, and we have sort of ebbed in and out of each other's professional lives. And I'm pleased to say that we get a chance to see each other even more often than not around the East Side these days. But I've really wanted to have Jessica here because she has such an interesting, long, winding road of experience as someone who got in relatively early and has had some really high heights and probably some low lows along the way, but has reinvented herself a number of times.
Michael Conrad
And I'm hoping we'll get a chance to hear about some of those twists and turns. Jessica, thanks for being here.
Jessica Randolph
I'm so happy to be here. Michael.
Michael Conrad
Wonderful. When we first met, you were brand new to real estate, but you were bringing a really high level of energy that was absolutely infectious and as a relatively high energy person myself, I was like, Yes, this person gets it. And that's how you make friends and like make waves in real estate.
Jessica Randolph
Yes. My goal actually was I just need to make friends with as many people as I possibly can. And yeah, I got my license at 21, got into real estate at I had just turned 20, so I didn't go to college. I got straight into it and I knew I wanted to be around homes, around historic homes and work with people.
Jessica Randolph
And so I just jumped right in.
Michael Conrad
I love that because I think a lot of people start their day falling in love with some piece of the puzzle in real estate or construction or business, and they find themselves at the door of this industry and they say, I want to do it. And oh my gosh, I don't know a lot of the other things besides this one little piece that got me here.
Michael Conrad
And I think that's lovely. I think that's a great place to start because it's your toe in the water. And quite frankly, that's enough sometimes for sure.
Jessica Randolph
Look at little babies that their parents just throw them into the water when they're like a year old and learn how to swim. And now they're like surfing at age 13 versus us. You know, in Tennessee, we don't live near an ocean and we get our kids in swim lessons when they're like four or five and they're timid when they get out there.
Jessica Randolph
And so you just got to get in it as early as you can and find someone who's doing what you want to be doing in five or ten years and become friends of that person, take them out to lunch, buy them birthday presents, like surround yourself with people that you want to be like.
Michael Conrad
Yeah, I think that's a big piece that a lot of people forget. I didn't know for a long time that I am the sum of the five people that I probably spend the most time with because they are either intentionally or accidentally pouring into my life 100%. And so I didn't go to school for business. I had to learn the hard way.
Michael Conrad
And so the who I was surrounding myself with early on made a big mark on me and so that's a little bit of the reason why you have gone the way that you went. You were around various people that kind of helped you on your journey. So tell me a little bit about those early days.
Jessica Randolph
Oh, my gosh, I have so many people that so many people to thank me now, but I actually so when I moved to Nashville, I knew I wanted to get into historic architecture. I loved old homes, but in ‘08, it just happened. And everybody's like, Don't get into historic architecture. It's way too expensive and the market sucks. But I didn't really listen to them.
Jessica Randolph
I was like, I know I love this. And eventually maybe the market will be better and I just have to follow what I love. So actually in East Nashville, there was a woman named Britney Turner who was renovating historic houses. And so I literally just called her the number that was on the rolls. It signed, called her up, and I left her voicemail and I said, Hey, I'm Jessica.
Jessica Randolph
I have no experience. I just turned 20. But if you need someone to wash your car or buy you a sandwich or sweep the floors of the house you're renovating, I'm your gal, and I'll do anything you need for free. Well, guess what? She called me back. Because who doesn't like free labor? So you call me back and she's like, Actually, I could really use some help.
Jessica Randolph
Why don't you come meet me the job site tomorrow? So we met, and I just, you know, got my feet wet of, like, looking and seeing what she was up to. And that day she's like, Why don't you just not go to school and I will hire you and you can quit your waitressing job, not teach you everything you need to know.
Jessica Randolph
And I never looked back. And so I worked for her for a number of years. And just like we were talking about starting to make friends, I just became friends with as many people as I possibly could. Marc Deutchman, Courtney Wilson, Bobby Norine, Jesse, Carlotta, Mike Zeller. I mean, so many top heavy hitters in real estate. I just became their friend.
Jessica Randolph
And as the little sponge that I was letting them know, I am fresh and I want to just absorb you. Can I just learn everything that you can give me? And and I'm so grateful for those people because they really helped shape who I am now in real estate. And. Yeah, okay.
Michael Conrad
So you're keen in on a really interesting concept, and that is everyone says your business is you and people want to do business with who they know they can trust, you know, and there's this big focus on personality. And as a sort of self-taught entrepreneur who didn't go to business school and didn't learn all the theory, I'm not sure I always agreed with that.
Michael Conrad
I was looking out in the world and seeing big, beautiful businesses that weren't people. They were ideas and they were lifestyles and they were experiences. And I tried to build that and I feel like in some ways I accomplished the goal, but in other ways I think I failed. After over ten years of business, I'm not sure how I feel.
Michael Conrad
And my original idea that it's it's idea and experience over person, I'm not sure is true.
Jessica Randolph
I think that's the number one mistake realtors make, is that they they start putting their company first in their business first, and then they lose their personality and like the true person behind it. And then people don't want to hire someone that they feel like they don't really know. And when you got this fancy brand or like all this, these accolades or whatever, that can totally distract the consumer from like the actual person behind it.
Michael Conrad
Which is such an interesting idea because there's a counter argument in the world of theory of marketing of that is the person will always feel you and the company will always be there because the company is made up of a sum greater than the number of its parts. Right? And so there's these competing ideas that a company can always be there for you.
Michael Conrad
24 seven and a person can't. But in real estate it almost feels like the opposite is true. Certainly nine times out of ten, if not more, and that the person is the reason why people do business, not the idea.
Jessica Randolph
100%.
Michael Conrad
Which is it's just a fascinating it's sort of an outsider looking in, self-taught, you know, just sort of school of hard knocks and all that. I haven't always figured that balance out. And so, yeah, it's it's here talking to you, talking to a larger audience is meant to try to reconnect, to say, yeah, there's people, there's real people behind the scenes that are fueling this and they're worthy to connect you.
Jessica Randolph
Have you ever been to a restaurant and the chef comes out and talks to you or like the owner comes out and talks to you? Okay, That to me is the secret sauce that most like fancy restaurants miss out on. And if you look at restaurants who have made it for the last like 40 plus years, that usually is the component that like keeps a restaurant going, like for a longer lifespan than other restaurants is like that personal connection.
Jessica Randolph
And I remember like growing up in Chicago, there were certain restaurants that were just there since like, since forever, you know, like this one Italian restaurant. The owner, like, was the one that greeted you at the door, remembered your name, like, remembered your kids names. And he was there from like the time he opened it in his late twenties until he, like, passed away and like, his legacy is now living on.
Jessica Randolph
And I think that people want that. They want to like, feel like they belong somewhere and like, feel like they are remembered. Right? And I think that a lot of businesses miss out on that kind of like long term business because they're not making that personal connection.
Michael Conrad
Which is, okay. So counter perspective, how is that sustainable for every Tom, Dick and Harry entrepreneur? Because we're not all cut from that same like the chef who's willing to put his entire life into the sauce right? We're not all cut from that same cloth. Sometimes I'm not dry, I'm cut from that same cloth. And so how do we do that on rinse and repeat as we're talking about growing our own businesses or helping other people who are listening grow their businesses?
Jessica Randolph
I think it's like being super intentional with so like the connection you make when you walk into a restaurant. He's like, Mike, I'm so glad you're here. Like, so your kids are growing up so fast here. Regard table for you in the back. We already have your appetizer like we're going to get starter for you or whatever. Like having like the thing that made it so special was that he remembered your name and acknowledge that you were there and like tried to go out of his way to, like, make you feel special, right?
Jessica Randolph
So I think that like remembering those key components with whatever you're doing, if it's sending out a mailer or putting together a newsletter or remembering a client's birthday is how can you very strategically make it feel like you singled that person out without actually having to, like, remember their name? Like, I don't know. I feel like there's ways that you can systematize it so that it feels like, Oh my gosh, this guy really cares about me.
Jessica Randolph
But maybe it was all in a database and he didn't actually remember your name, but as soon as your face came in, his assistant was the one who remembered because she looked it up, you know? I mean, there's different things you can do to, like, make that feel the same way without you actually having to remember everybody.
Michael Conrad
I wish they talked to you. Or maybe I had this experience in my current life earlier because I've had to go through some hard ups and downs to try and recognize that that personal connection, however, is not manufactured. But however you craft it all, say it, it's important. And what I'm trying to figure out now is how to make my team create an overall curated experience that feels personal without feeling disingenuous because it is being done by a team and not necessarily just by a person.
Michael Conrad
And so that balance of trying to build and grow and and go volume oriented for our particular industry is very important. Um, yeah, it's always in competition with sort of it feeling sterile and clinical and sort of, you know, repetitive or whatever. So yeah, it's, it's a tough balance.
Jessica Randolph
Yeah, I this has been a something I've tried to perfect because I think it's the reason why I've been successful in my business was like that personal connection, definitely. But it is, you're right it's like it's not very sustainable and it's really hard to multiply on a greater scale, especially as you grow and your team members grow. Like, how do you continue that same experience when you have other people now that are representing you or doing things for you?
Jessica Randolph
And so I'm like, I'm very passionate about this. I love that we're talking about because like, I think that's what really helped me, my business and set me apart as an agent early on, even when I was young and very inexperienced, people were hiring me that were twice my age because I had that personal connection. And it didn't matter how many years I'd been in the business or like what my experience was, they just felt like they could really trust me and that I really had their back.
Jessica Randolph
And I felt like that was what kind of like set me apart early on.
Michael Conrad
Youthfulness might feel like a barrier to some.
Jessica Randolph
Totally.
Michael Conrad
But you can mitigate it and and kind of stop those roadblocks by having a trustworthiness that might come in the form of knowledge, or it might come in the form of just like, Hey, I got your back. I'm just going to be there and like, go hard, you know, balls to the wall to make sure that it happens correctly or go smoothly or whatever it is.
Michael Conrad
And so that I think, is something that a lot of new, younger real estate professionals are missing because there is this visibility, this sort of like push to look successful so that people trust you for sure. But then there's this kind of like hollow reality behind it of, oh, yeah, you don't actually have a ton of experience. And to give you a little bit of a compliment even early on, because we've known each other for a number of years now.
Jessica Randolph
Estate probably almost ten.
Michael Conrad
You always owned your reality. You never heard how many number deals or how little or how much experience you had. You were always very transparent in a genuine sort of way, and I think it drew people in. I think I can be accused and maybe others to their listening that you got to figure to make it right. And so I'm not sure that's the best way.
Michael Conrad
And some of those really, really authentic folks like yourself. Yeah, age just was a number. It wasn't a barrier. Yeah.
Jessica Randolph
Yeah. I think for a long time I had this fear like, okay, no one's going to hire me because I'm 22 years old. And and I truly was like, yeah, I, I don't know what I'm doing. A lot of times I have to go ask for advice from my mentors or advice for my broker or whatever. But the one thing that I did learn early on and I think for anybody, even if you've been in the business for 20 years, that like a pro tip is don't be obsessed with you and your business and how you're being portrayed.
Jessica Randolph
Be obsessed with your client and put them first on the pedestal before yourself because they'll feel that. And I think that that that's what I tried to do. And my story is crazy, but I really started off on a bad foot because I'd worked for a builder for a number of years. It was a great experience for me and I'm so grateful.
Michael Conrad
Part of your story.
Jessica Randolph
It's part of my story, and I'm so grateful that I worked for that builder for so long and truly would not be where I am without their help. But it was really hard to make a name for myself that was attached or detached from the builders name. Once I went off on my own into real estate, they were like, Oh, you're just this person's builder is representative, and why would I choose?
Jessica Randolph
Use my realtor when I can choose somebody who's been doing it much longer? And so I had this huge roadblock in front of me of like, how am I going to make a name for myself and actually get these people to use me who associate me with a with a with a bad contractor or a bad builder and so I had to really not only have the confidence to even reach back out to those people, I'd sold homes, too, but I had to overcompensate for maybe a negative experience that they had throughout the building process.
Jessica Randolph
And the problem was I didn't have an influx of clients because I'm not from Nashville, I'm from Chicago. And so the only people that I could put into my sphere of influence to try and create some business out of were these people that genuinely probably didn't like the experience I had with the builder, and they already had an agent that represented them already.
Jessica Randolph
They had a buyer's agent. I was the listing agent. The one thing that I realized I had to do is I said, I have to win these people over with me and I have to somehow disassociate myself with the builder. And how do I do that at 23 years old when they already have a realtor that is keeping in touch with them that maybe they went to college with or their family with?
Jessica Randolph
Like how do I get them to use me instead? And so what I started to do truly was I thought about it from a different perspective, actually. You know, who I thought about was Taylor Swift. Taylor did something super interesting, like five or six years ago with her fans. Obviously, she's got millions of fans and she can't give the same experience to every single person, but she's selected a few fans and did something super random and amazing and she sent them gift boxes.
Jessica Randolph
Did you remember hearing about this? Yeah, She would send them like custom gift boxes of like I talked to and social media. I saw that you also love cats and I know that you are from Michigan and I curated a box of fun little gifts for you and like dropped it off on their porch and it had like, you know, obviously merch from her, but also had like things that she randomly picked out for that person from Anthropologie, like very like specific to that person gifts and not only did it affect that personal fan, can you imagine getting a personal gift from Taylor Swift?
Jessica Randolph
But also everybody that loved her now loved her even more because they saw that she was doing something so personal for the one person, you know. And that's what I decided to start doing my business. So what I did was I saw the client that maybe had a bad transaction or had a very stressful transaction. Their cabinets came out the wrong color or the project was six months delayed.
Jessica Randolph
And I was like, How can I go to that one person and make them feel so, so special, like Taylor Swift did to that one fan? And so I would stalk them on social media, find out as much as they could about them, remember their kids names, and deliver literally deliver stuff to their porch. I remember one time I made a bunch of homemade cookies, put them in cute little baggies, and I went door to door to all the houses I had sold and basically apologized to them like, I'm so sorry that your transaction was stressful, but I want to let you know that I'm back in the business.
Jessica Randolph
I'm not working for that builder anymore. If you ever need help with anything, even if it's like, I don't know how to fix my toilet, and maybe Jessica knows someone that can, like, reach out to me for anything. I just want to be here to help you. Yeah, and that's how I got started.
Michael Conrad
This. This idea, this struggle of reinvention. The market pushes us, that place sometimes our own life station and our experiences push us into a place where we're forced into this sort of rebrand or this reinvention of self. I value innovation, and I think that the innovators and the trail cutters and the bushwhackers out there in the business world are never you can't keep them down, you know, because there's always something new around the corner that they're thinking about or working on.
Michael Conrad
And that ability that you had to sort of like reinvent yourself out of just being a builder's rep and then into kind of a solo agent building yourself a business. And then now you've taken reinvention yet a further step and are focusing on new ways to connect with a larger audience and draw people in and kind of rethink your sphere.
Michael Conrad
And so this idea of all of us are going to be subject to reinvention. And anyone listening here and like a younger version of myself, certainly don't get, you know, complacent. There's going to be a need where somebody is going to turn, something's going to change, and you're going to say, okay, well, that version of myself, the tools that got me here, aren't necessarily going to take me to the next chapter.
Michael Conrad
So what do I got to do? So what are some of the things that you've done, even in this latest Reinvent mission to sort of continue the evolution of your business?
Jessica Randolph
I think the big word for me would be focus. And I focused on what I saw was working and anything that wasn't working. I kind of just let it sit on the shelf and say, okay, this is working and how can I keep doing what's working more and how can I do it more efficiently and how can I expand?
Jessica Randolph
And the thing for me that worked so well was I started teaching how to buy a house class in Nashville and truly did it just out of the passion for doing it. I'd seen so many buyers, you know, making the biggest purchase of their life and having no idea what they were doing and blindly trusting their realtor and maybe getting advice from a dad who bought a house before.
Jessica Randolph
But they really didn't know what they were spending their money on. And to me I was like, Why? Why is nobody teaching on this? So I started teaching on it. And again, just from the genuine passion I have for this business and like for helping people, people felt that. And so after class they'd come up to me be like, Oh my gosh, I want to use my realtor now.
Jessica Randolph
This is like the most info I've ever gotten in real estate. And now I trust you and like you more than anybody else I know in real estate. And so I was like, How do I keep that happening? How can I keep helping people, keep educating people and like, keep bringing on new clients? And so the last three years I have basically condensed my class, I've perfected it and I just started to get more and more, more.
Jessica Randolph
Now we're teaching it nationwide, which has been really cool. But yeah, I think I just focused on what was working and really set, sat back and looked at my business and said, Why is this working so well and what are the key factors about it that I can manipulate in other cities? And so that's kind of where I'm at now.
Michael Conrad
Amazing. Okay, so you lay down so many amazing ideas just and so let's let's go deep on a couple of those. Okay? Okay. So what's working? A lot of people who are entrepreneurs or in the business and are listening to this, they're probably asking themselves the same question, What is working for me? Did you have a method where you were looking at ROI or some sort of exposure where I'm getting the best traction here or I'm doing this sort of digital effort over here?
Michael Conrad
What was your measurement to try to center in on what's working for me? Because that's great advice.
Jessica Randolph
Yeah, well, I think a lot of a lot of people that run businesses, they just do what they love. They do the best they can. They get to work every day and, you know, knock out what they need to knock out. But a lot of times they don't sit back and say, where is the majority of my business coming from?
Jessica Randolph
And if you are anybody you know that's taking a real estate course, you know that you should at the end of the year review and say, Where did my business come from? Is it from word of mouth referrals? Is it from all those cookies I dropped off? Is it from the open houses I hosted? And for me, I was looking at this space of teaching my class and I was like, Oh my gosh, a huge portion of my business is coming from this class.
Jessica Randolph
How can I do that more and more and kind of like monetize that process and manipulate it in? It is something for me that I felt like I not only was it unique to my business, but also it felt like there was a there was an opportunity, an opportunity to really like brand myself that way. I didn't really see any other realtor doing it that way.
Jessica Randolph
And so I it was a mixture of I'm seeing what's working and I see an opportunity to fill this void in the real estate business.
Michael Conrad
Okay, everyone, just pause, rewind. Listen to that again, because it is not just what's working, it's also an awareness of where the gaps in the market is and where the demand is. Totally. You got to be able to match those two things up. So there is a data piece to this that is uncomfortable for a lot of folks, even like me, that didn't come from the world of business or accounting or something that was more granular.
Michael Conrad
You know, I was a creative, you know, before I got into business. And so chasing data, well, it was a learned skill. It was a muscle that I didn't really have that I had to teach myself to do. So gathering that, where do my referrals come from? Gathering that data of like, what's my CRM telling me? Do I even have something?
Michael Conrad
Do I have a spreadsheet, Do I have a CRM? You have to be able to gather the data first. If you're not data collecting along the way. And this isn't complicated, we don't have to be, you know, lost and board and spreadsheets and, you know, been counting accounting. It really comes down to just thoughtfully going back over the clients that you're working with in any business and saying, where did this person come from?
Michael Conrad
Did it come from a referral from somebody else? And then where did that person come from? Where are my efforts that I put in the world? You're sending money and energy into the world, right? Where is that stuff coming back to you in the form of energy and money? There's this sort of reflection piece that's really what our ROI is.
Michael Conrad
At the end of the day, it's What am I getting back from the work I'm putting out? And so you were starting to do that data collection, but then you were also being aware of like, Oh, people keep telling me not just I like you, but also thank goodness you're doing this such a gap in the market action that nuts go through high school, college, all this stuff.
Michael Conrad
Nobody's teaching this class. No, this concept of this basic financial education or a piece of financial education and it's wildly important.
Jessica Randolph
I know. Well, that's why I started teaching it. I'm like, I wish I would have taken this class 15 years ago, Right? I wish my parents would have taken it 40 years ago because they'd probably be in a different financial bracket if they would have used real estate as a tool to build their wealth. And instead they just bought the nicest house that they got preapproved for and lived in it for 35 years.
Jake Hall
Hey, everyone, it's Jake, director for the Business of Homes podcast. I hope you have been enjoying today's episode, beginning with how one phone call created the start of Jessica's career. How putting your business first and losing your personality can be the biggest mistake a realtor can make and how tracking your success is not just about what is working, but it's where the holes in the market are.
Jake Hall
After the break, Michael and Jessica talk about what success looks like to her, Jessica's breakthrough in hiring a team and how online learning is an extremely powerful tool for agents. This episode just keeps getting better. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram @thebusinessofhomespod, where you can interact with us and see some great bite-sized pieces from all of our episodes.
Jake Hall
For you listeners out there. Did you know that our entire podcast are filmed and are on our YouTube channel? Check it out next time you want to see our amazing guests tell their stories. And are you currently watching this episode in video format? Don't forget to follow us on your preferred audio streaming service to take us with you on the go.
Jake Hall
Lastly, do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcast@gmail.com. Please enjoy the rest of today's episode with Jessica Randolph. Let's get back to it.
Jessica Randolph
I always thought of my business very similar, actually, when I worked for The Builder, and I like giving this analogy because I think it helps. Sometimes it can get kind of murky thinking about real estate transactions and like how to look at the data because every person is a person and they've got different personalities and there's a reason why they found you or heard about you.
Jessica Randolph
But when thinking about building new homes and renovating homes, we did a lot of different things. We did wholesale properties, we did flips, fixing flips, we did long term holds, We did developments where we build multiple houses on one lot. But if we sat back and looked back at our year and said, which deal made us the most amount of money, it was always the quick flips or the wholesales.
Jessica Randolph
It wasn't these big, huge projects that we worked on that took, you know, two years to develop and it wasn't a lot of the new construction homes we were building, but the ones actually made the most money were the easier transactions and the ones that were kind of a dime a dozen, I would say. And that kind of shifted how we started making decisions as a company.
Jessica Randolph
We're like, Well, let's just do more of what's working. Why are we spending so many hours in the day focused on these huge developments? And we realized most of it was because of Arrigo. We're like, Well, we want to do the big developments. We want to be the big dogs in the industry. We want to have her name on these huge projects and and be able to look super big time.
Jessica Randolph
But at the end of the day, in my opinion, what the company really should have done was focus on what worked and do more of those wholesales and those little, you know, paint and carpet rehabs and putting lipstick on a house and putting it back in the market because at the end of the day that was the best ROI.
Jessica Randolph
But the ego got in the way. And I think looking back and having like an honest look at your business and saying, what is working for me? Maybe your realtor and most of your business is coming from your friends that are telling, you know their friends about you. Focus on that. Have more parties, do more client events, do more face to face interaction with those friends who are like your ambassador clients, and maybe you do a big special thing for them every year.
Jessica Randolph
Send them on a cruise after they send you 20 referrals, like focus on what's working.
Michael Conrad
You've been through these areas of your own life and you're in this sort of new area where you are providing this amazing education, both digitally and in person. But your business looks differently now. So what is success looking like for you after ten years?
Jessica Randolph
I love that question because that has changed so much. If you'd asked me five years ago, I would have told you successes, how much money I'm making, and I don't really look at my business like that anymore. For me, it's all about my time and the quality of what I'm doing. And in that moment with my time and for me having two kids and another on the way to success is doing what I love most of the time.
Jessica Randolph
When I'm away from my kids and using my time so wisely that I'm leveraging it in a way that I could be making as much money as I can when I am away from my children. So I would say that's the big thing is like the management of my time. So like a successful day for me is like, okay, I spent, you know, 80% of my day doing the thing that really truly, like, pushes my business forward and makes money and I'm doing what I love.
Jessica Randolph
And and then I'm not really necessarily I'm not super focused on the paycheck after that. It's like, I know I'm doing what works. I know I'm doing what I love and I'm being as smart with my time as I possibly can.
Michael Conrad
Sometimes it feels like there's this linear need to put a lot of effort in the beginning, and then you try to reap the rewards later. But I think that idea is evolving. You know, people are showing us that you don't just have to go into the office for X number of years so that you can go be remote later on.
Michael Conrad
Maybe there's a remote option for you now, or you have to build wealth in a traditional way. You can do it through alternative ways. And so specifically to our industry, is it really, in your view, that you just have to put your nose to the grindstone, pump out transactions as much as you possibly can so that you can get to a place or systematizing and automating?
Michael Conrad
Is that a piece of the puzzle that a lot of folks are missing? That has been a big benefit for you now that you're evolving?
Jessica Randolph
I have two opinions on it. I do think that there is a hustle grind factor within there. Does that mean you need to work until 10 p.m. every night? No way. I think you need to have balance and say, look, I do not work on the weekends at all. I have haven't in eight years. And early on in my career I made that decision.
Jessica Randolph
I was like, I know that Saturdays are four showings, but I'm going to draw a line in the sand and say, for my mental health, it's worth it for me to take a little bit of a pay cut at the end of the year to say that I'm only going to do showings and work Monday through Friday. And so I think my advice to anyone listening to this is like, I want that freedom now, but I'm only two years into three years and set boundaries for yourself in place where you get that flexibility, but that it still allows you space to grind and hustle and great.
Jessica Randolph
I did Hustle and Grind Monday through Friday, but I knew as soon as, you know, 6:00 on a Friday came around that I was going to have that flexibility in that break through the weekend that a lot of agents don't give themselves. So I think there's a balance. Early on. I'm like, find that balance definitely grind and work your to your best ability and take those showings that are 45 minutes away and take the listing appointment that's almost an hour away.
Jessica Randolph
Like take every single deal and every single lead seriously, but make space to have that flexibility and then also operate the way that you picture yourself operating ten years from now. And I'm doing that now in my business of like, no, we're not in every state yet with our classes. And there's we want to be in different languages, like there's a lot of we've got a lot of serious goals that might be ten or 15 years away, but I want to start acting like that CEO And like the presence in the company of a 15 year old company today and treating my business the way that I want it to be treated in ten or
Jessica Randolph
15 years and using similar language in the way I say my emails and the way I manage my time, I'm they say like when you want to have a big party like you, you know, prepare the room for as many people as you want to come. If your business is super tiny and you're just a coffee table size dinner party like prepare and get ready for the masses.
Jessica Randolph
Right. And and do that early and have that expectation. And I think it'll be a lot easier to fill the space once you've kind of like mentally prepared for that level of success.
Michael Conrad
Okay so this is great advice because there is a a theme, I think, amongst your story, your day to day real estate practitioner that I am my business and my business and me. And we talked actually a little bit about personality versus brand identity earlier. But as you begin to sort of cast your vision forward and think a little bit bigger about what could possibly be in the future, the sort of larger table that you speak of it, it comes back to this incredibly complicated balance of trying to figure out how much of me is going to do the work around the larger table and how much of a team that I need to build
Michael Conrad
and I think real estate professionals classically don't envision themselves as the owner of a company now or even in the future. They envision themselves as practitioners, you know, versus sort of owners, managers, alligators, whatever it is. And that's been something that has been really interesting for me as sort of a relative outsider looking in to the industry is that we have tried to build something that has always been focused on company and organizational structure as equally as important as everything else along the way, because the volume piece was a requirement for our growth potential.
Michael Conrad
And so I think that more classes, more conversation needs to be had about, well, how do I get from this place now where I'm a me to a place where we are a we. Right. You know, well.
Jessica Randolph
I think the biggest thing is fear. A lot of people don't take that next step because I was one of them. I remember it was 2016, I was doing about 25 deals a year on my own. And the only person that I had helping me was a contractor, close person. I didn't have an assistant. I have anything. And my lender actually came to me and he's like, Jessica, we just did a panel together.
Jessica Randolph
We're speaking with some other realtors, and I was up there with some top dogs who had, you know, ten, 15 plus people teams. And here I am like the lone wolf by myself. And he's like, You're ready for this? And I'm like, No, I'm not. He's like, No, you are. You just don't have the confidence in yourself. But you're ready for an assistant or buyer's agent or you're ready to expand your team.
Jessica Randolph
And all I felt was fear. I was like, I'm afraid of losing money. I'm afraid of being a bad boss. I'm afraid of disappointing somebody else. And it's easy to say, Well, it's all my shoulders going to deal with it. But I realized I was like, I am expert level now, I would say with my transactions and I could use some help and these other things.
Jessica Randolph
And my favorite analogy ever is when you go to your doctor, does your doctor like signing all the paperwork with you and like print off all your forms and make sure there's a pen in the clipboard? No, because he's your doctor. Your doctor should be doing the most important things to make sure that your body is healthy and that his time is so valuable that he's only doing the things that a doctor can do.
Jessica Randolph
Right. And here I was being the receptionist, the, you know, secretary, the marketing person, the janitor and the doctor all at once for my business. And it wasn't sustainable. And I was getting burnt out. And so I finally was like, Oh my gosh, I was looking at my lender in the face and I was like, I think you're right.
Jessica Randolph
And so started praying about it, and I ended up making my first hire within the next week. And I hired a part time assistant. I was super afraid of being able to afford her. But it's amazing, like how my mindset changed of instead of thinking like, Oh no, am I going to be able to afford her, I start thinking, Well, how can I guarantee that I'm going to afford her?
Jessica Randolph
And that really put a little like a really nice little pressure on my business of like, what do I need to put in place to make sure I can withstand this pressure of paying for somebody's salary and making sure she's able to go out to dinner and make sure she's able to go on trips and give her the stability that she needs to work for me.
Jessica Randolph
Yeah, and that's what brought my business to the next level. And then after that, it was like, how do I manage her? How do I manage my time? I brought her on full time and then eventually she became a buyer's agent. And you just have to get over that fear of of thinking that you can't do it.
Michael Conrad
Yeah, that pressure around trying to support someone, it feels very scary when you haven't done it yet. I would say real estate is such an interesting industry because there's a pretty clear path and I would say a relatively low barrier of entry. You take some classes, you take a test, you check a few boxes, but there is this looming sort of other percentage of knowledge that it's really hard to get your hands on.
Michael Conrad
And you have to learn kind of the hard way deal of the times. And so my hope and goal is that, you know, folks listening here are looking for those little bits of knowledge that's a little bit gold nuggets to sort of carry with them into their next transaction so that they're getting ever smarter. Every single. And I'm obviously really always glad to have someone here who's on a similar journey.
Michael Conrad
And so my hope is that we can come back together every once in a while and ready to lay down some exciting new ideas that people can grab hold of and bounce back and forth and say, Yes, I'm becoming a little bit smarter and a little bit better. Real estate professional every single day.
Jessica Randolph
Totally, Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, the best way to learn is by doing and by making mistakes. And that's also I mean, they say that you become who you surround yourself with. I also think you become what you're listening to and what you're pouring into your brain. And so listening to a podcast like this and really educating yourself, I mean, you're just helping, you know, lay a roadmap for yourself so that you're not making huge mistakes down the road because you've learned from other people's mistakes.
Jessica Randolph
And I really had to learn the hard way by making actual mistakes and be like, Oh my gosh, I need to write everything down when I'm at a showing and I need to write everything down that, you know, a client says and there's just so much. But listening to a podcast can really speed up the process of you, you know, be more successful.
Michael Conrad
And to be clear, nobody is ever going to be able to listen to enough podcasts or watch enough YouTube videos to avoid all of those little mistakes that make up that genuine foundation of experience that'll make you a better entrepreneur and a businessperson later on. But you can start here by trying to limit the number of those mistakes, and we're glad to have everyone here.
Michael Conrad
So, Jessica, thanks so much for being on our podcast. Very exciting to have someone with your length and breadth of experience and I will definitely be having you come back, as.
Jessica Randolph
Thanks for having me.
Michael Conrad
Thanks, everyone. This has been the business of Holmes podcast and we'll catch you next time.
Jake Hall
Hey everyone. Jake again, director of the Business of Holmes podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. A huge thank you to Jessica Randolph for being a part of our original launch. Go follow her on Instagram @jesslourandolph and @thehouwtobuyahouseclass and let her know how much you enjoyed her story. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred listening platform and make sure to follow us on Instagram as well @thebusinessofhomespod.
Jake Hall
Do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcast@gmail.com. Thank you for listening and we'll see you again soon.